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Tom Allanson

Customer Service - Keeping IT Real

The reason I enjoy working with small businesses so much is because there's a sense of enthusiasm there that you just don't find anywhere else.

What I appreciate most about the infrastructures of small businesses is that they're horizontal and generally non-hierarchical. This means that everybody picks up the phone, speaks on a first-name basis, takes care of each other. Communication and work duties aren't guided by differences in title but rather by similarities in motivation and goals.

As CEO of a mid-sized business (and previously of large corporations), I'm keenly aware of the problems that a hands-off management approach can create, especially in regards to customer service. While your business may have excellent customer service managers and evangelists, don't use your position as an excuse to detach yourself from the customer experience. Whether you're a CEO or an intern, you're still part of your company's brand.

This philosophy is why, after all these years, I still answer customer questions and support requests via email and phone. When a customer reaches out for help on a matter that is of high importance to them, who better to assuage their concerns than the leader of the company?

Always be available to your customers. They're the reason you do what you do.

Tom Allanson of PerfectForms shares his ideas on managing business processes, automating workflows and designing for business users - both in the cloud and on the ground.

Tom Allanson

Tom Allanson, CEO of Perfect Forms, Inc., has over 19 years of experience leading teams and growing businesses and has held key executive roles at Intuit, General Electric, and H&R Block. Most recently the President of H&R Block Digital Tax Division, he had previously been Senior Vice President at Intuit in charge of the Tax Division, including TurboTax. He started his career as a design engineer.